New but not improved

 

What to Look for in... Elizabeth Jenner, illus. Natasha Durley. Ladybird Books

Library books

After my utter delight in the 1960s editions of the What to Look for books I was looking forward to comparing them with the 2020 editions and I was delighted when my library reservations came in so quickly.

Sadly that's pretty much my only delight where these books are concerned. Where as I've already used the 60 year old books to identify wildlife I've seen in the past month or so I really can't see myself saying the same for these books.

They are bright and colourful but none of the pictures are in context, they are just illustrations on a page - not part of a scene and this means you' can't actually tell where you'd see the bird/insect/flower and on top of that the scale of the images is often out of kilter. A wren is not the same size as a robin for instance.

Some of the text is really good - I especially liked the part that explains how tides work for instance (and I could have done with this as a child for it was only recently I've been convinced that the tide being out in Kent doesn't mean that it is high tide in France) - the tone really annoyed me, especially the use of quotation marks when describing things:

Once the vegetables in these beds have been picked, the allotment gardeners will break up the soils and remove any weeds, using a metal tool called a "hoe".

 What to look for in Autumn p.12

It is good to see that there are nature books for younger children still be produced but however fond I am of Ladybird books I'd really recommend either I-Spy or Usborne books over these. New definitely isn't improved. 

Double page spread from What to look for in Autumn showing both of my main problems with the books.

 

World Book Night 2021: Book Fourteen

 

 We Are All Made of Molecules - Susan Nielsen   (Andersen Press)

 Own eBook

Warning there are spoilers in this review

I don't know where to start with this one, it made me so cross on so many levels. My first gripe is why does this 2nd YA fiction book have to be North American? Surely we have a plethora of great YA writers who are British?

The other gripes are to do with style and content. This book is very much in the vein of Wonder but comes no where near the brilliance of that book. There are so many issues in this book and off the top of my head here are just a few of them: death of a parent (from long illness), divorce of parents because father is gay, blended families, intelligent child but with no social awareness, child obsessed with fashion and friendship but not academic, bullying, peer presssure - oh and yes the biggie attempted date rape.

Phew, once all those are covered there wasn't much room for the writing, which may have been just as well because the style was all over the place. With themes as outlined above you'd think that this was a read for older teen, but in style and language this was pretty much a middle grade/upper primary  - way too junior for the content.

Oh and as for the content - by the end they basically all live happily ever after. I could handle that with the blended family coming together but the way the sexual assault was dealt with is shameful - as an adult reading this I could see that something was building but I never dreamt it would go as far as it did nor that there were no repercussions for either the victim  (and indeed it could be read that she was victim shamed) nor for her attacker.

I feel that I read this book so you don't have to and so far I think it is the worst book I've read for this project. 

World Book Night 2021: Book Twelve

 

Elevation by Stephen King (Hodder and Stoughton)

own copy (eBook)

This was another book that I was dreading reading, I am not a horror fan and Green Mile/Shawshank Redemption excepted I only know King as a writer in that genre.

The first bit of good news about this book was that it wasn't a horror novel. The second bit of good news was that it was short - only 160 pages so definitely a novella.

However that's where the positives stopped for me. I found the writing clunky, the message didactic and patronising and as for the 'mystery'...words fail me.

Unlike many of the books I've discovered through this challenge and others similar to it there was nothing in this book that made me want to read more by the author but at least now I can say I've read a King novel and he isn't for me at all!

Thinking about WBN as a project I can't help but feel a little sorry for people who are gifted this book on the back of saying they liked recent films based on King's books. I guess it might introduce them to new genres but I don't think they'll be expecting what they get!

Too many books, too little time - and wasting what I have!

Books, books everywhere

Now that I am reading more again (although still nowhere near pre December 2017 levels) I am taking on more reading projects and finding that I can manage them in the time scales which is really heartening.  I am generally also more willing to give up on books that don't hook me, rather than wasting my time and concentration on them.

This is all well and good but as a new project is just started and many of the library books I've reserved have also come in recently I am feeling a little pressured. Of course this isn't stopping me requesting books (from Netgalley & the library) or from buying more so I am my own worst enemy sometimes.  I am watching a lot less television on my days off so that is probably a good thing! Hopefully I will sort the book balance out before too long, but realistically speaking this is only going to happen if publishing takes a 10 year break!

This week however I feel a little bit like I have wasted my precious reading time and concentration as I read (probably my first and definitely my last) Danielle Steel book - Beauchamp Hall.

While I do love a good chicklit book on occasion this one only crossed my radar because I read an article/early sales pitch stating that the book was set in Norfolk, but that the author had never visited the area. With this in mind I started reading this looking for errors.

On the plus side apart from building a stately home/castle in an area of the county where one doesn't exist there were no glaring geographical errors and Steel didn't try to recreate any Norfolk dialect.

That is pretty much all I have to say that is positive about this book!

I found the writing style dreadful and repetitive and I spotted every plot development coming all the way through - not something I often do with 100% accuracy, there is usually at least one surprise or twist that makes the read more enjoyable. As for the sex scenes at least the book was so unremarkable I should soon forget them! Let's not forget the repetitiveness either ;)

Even the trope of a 'superfan' coming to the location of their favourite TV show wasn't explored in anyway that is different and I'm pretty sure labour laws in the film/TV industry are a little stricter than implied here.

This book was like an identikit book you see advertised for children, you supply the name and a few details and the child is dropped into the plot - each book is the same but very slightly different and feels personal. The same was the case here - all that needed to be changed was the county the book was set in, the train station used and the drive time to London and the book could have been set anywhere!

Like I say I did go into this book expecting not to enjoy it, but I expected this to be due to a badly researched and stereotypical portrayal of Norfolk - not because of the plot/writing.

I'm guessing that to fans of Steel none of this matters but if you are someone who collects/reads books set in Norfolk I'd say really don't bother with this one - try the new Georgina Harding book Land of the Living which is set in the same area just post WW2 and has a far more interesting plot.

The dangers of visiting book related locations

Anne Frank  House, Amsterdam

The Diary of Anne Frank has long been an important book to me, I first read it as a young teenager, then went on to read it in German for that A Level and finally studied it in some depth during my MA in Children's Literature. The last time we visited Amsterdam we didn't realise how far in advance you had to book tickets to tour the Secret Annexe and so it was top of my wish list on a recent visit to the city.

I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't entirely what we got.  I've seen the touring Anne Frank exhibition in a couple of forms and always been impressed at the balance this presents. While Anne's diary and story are special the exhibition always managed to put her life into a greater historical context.

I found this to be missing in the tour of the Prinsengracht building. The whole thing felt a little like a shrine to Anne, there was so little information about her immediate family - let alone the other four people who shared the annexe with the Franks. I have studied the Holocaust/Shoah and so have a greater understanding of this part of twentieth century history, but if I was coming to the Anne Frank House with little or no context I would have come away feeling that it was sad Anne (and most of her family) died but with no idea of the scale of the Holocaust, that Anne was one of millions from across Europe...

It wasn't all bad however. The audio tour was brilliant. It was clear and easy to use and if you missed something then it was easy to re-listen and not be forced on a route march through the building. You also got a real feel for how small and dark the hiding place was - I really did imagine it being both bigger and lighter. The fear of discovery thanks to noise was also clear to see as the wooden floors in Dutch building are not built for quietness.  It was also nice to see some of the photos that Anne stuck to the walls and also excerpt from the original diary.

I may be being unfair on the museum as it is currently undergoing some renovations but the final straw for me was that the tour ended in a cafe/restaurant, not even the ubiquitous gift shop! When I did look in the museum shop however that was also a disappointment for again it only contained copies of the Diary (admittedly in dozens of languages) and gifts relating to Anne and the building - there were still no items putting Anne's story into context.

I'm pleased to have finally seen the Secret Annexe so on my next reread of the Diary I will be able to visualise the location more but right now I am not at all impressed with the museum's interpretation of the two plus years the family spent in hiding.

Theatre 2017 - Review Twenty-one - Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe, London. June 2017.

After last month's trip to the Globe to see Romeo and Juliet it probably will come as no surprise to read how nervous I was about returning to the Globe for another Shakespeare.

Sadly I think I should have listened to my inner turmoil. This was another updated pop Shakespeare and it just wasn't for me. I winced when the musicians appeared on stage with electric guitars and it got worse as the opening number (and that's not something Shakespeare wrote at all) was We are family by Sister Sledge.  It was fun but what did it have to with Twelfth Night?

There were definitely elements I liked to this. The comic characters were very well done. They were funny and they didn't out stay their welcome. I also liked the twins - their story popped for me.

The rest was awful however, Orsino made my flesh creep, Olivia wasa non entity and I really really disliked Malvolio - to the extent that I don't think his mistreatment went far enough.  In a play that is all about gender swapping so if you are going to have a girl play Malvolio then do something extra with this rather than just 1970s gags about a girl acting like a man.  As for Feste, he had a nice sounding voice but I couldn't actually hear what he was singing - not a fault that was limited to him I hasten to add. How can adding so many speakers and microphones make the sound worse?

After talking this over with Rebecca we are in disagreement as to which play is the most terrible. Rebecca says this one and I say Romeo and Juliet - at least this one actually kept to the plot.

We had planned a double bill at the Globe on this day and had tickets to see Tristan and Yseult the same evening. It was from the same director and reviews all talk about the same wacky viewpoint and so we decided that enough was enough and sold our tickets back to the box office and caught an early train home.

We have tickets for one more play at the Globe this season but it has to be said I for one can't wait for a new AD to be in post and an end to this style of performance in what was my favourite venue.

Theatre 2017: Review Twenty - The Play that Goes Wrong

The Play that Goes Wrong, Theatre Royal Norwich, June 2017.

I never really thought that farce was for me, slapstick films don't really hold my attention after the first few gags but yet this is my fourth play in the genre...

I watched, and was reasonably entertained by, Peter Pan Goes Wrong when it was shown on the TV at Christmas so cheap tickets to the original Goes Wrong play seemed too good to miss.

For some reason it just didn't quite hit the spot, it was reasonably funny and the actors had a great sense of timing. The set was incredible too - you really did never know what was going to fail next or how the cast would deal with the malfunctions was the real highlight.

The downsides were the plot and the delivery of the lines. The plot did just peter out and I do think that if you've seen one Play that... you've seen them all. In addition to this all too often the lines were lost in the mayhem - especially in the final scene, I hadn't even realised that the play was over it was so muddled.

On the whole it was a fun night and I did laugh a little but being a fan of the Blakeney Players and the Maddermarket theatre with the shows they put on I was a bit uncomfortable at the mocking of these great local theatre groups - this just wasn't quite affectionate enough.

Theatre 2017: Review Eighteen - Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe, London. May 2017.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. From the sublime The Ferryman in the afternoon to this... It will be clear to regular readers that The Globe is one of my favourite theatres and that I am rarely disappointed by what I see there.  I've even tried to stick up for the decisions in direction made by Emma Rice over the past 18 months - I'm not against modern innovations in the traditional spaces - last year's Two Gentlemen of Verona was a great watch with lights and pop music. But this was just awful.

I don't really want to write about this show. I am all for exploring what you can do with a text but I'm really not sure that semi naked dancers with nipple tassels, a man pretending to be a dog, women giving birth to coffins and a radical re-write to the ending was just all too much for me.

My other niggle is with the Globe itself - this production used strobe lighting and at no point did I see any warning for this.  I was lucky that this time I was able to shut my eyes and not end up unwell watching this but the same wouldn't have been true if I'd come with my mum. The Globe say they do warn about the lights and to some extent this is true - it is mentioned on their website and in the email they send out before a performance BUT in small text buried in other information. You do not expect this style of lighting at the Globe and strobe lights are a real health issue so this should be made much clearer - big letters on the top of the webpage, signs on the wooden doors before you enter the theatre...

I hate writing a hatchet job like this, especially for one of my favourite places and especially after seeing the wonderful Nell Gwynn just a few days before but I am now very nervous about the rest of the season.

Theatre 2017: Review Three - La Cage aux Folles

La Cage aux Folles, Theatre Royal Norwich. January 2017.

Unexpectedly Mr Norfolkbookworm accompanied me to this which was a nice surprise, he isn't a great one for theatre or musicals as a rule but as he'd liked the film versions of this he kindly kept me company when Rebecca wasn't able to.

I still am unsure what I felt about this show. Visually it was stunning, the costumes, the set and the dances from the Cagelles were a feast for the eyes and the live music was very good, but...

At heart I thought this was supposed to be a bitter sweet comedy with a strong, but unconventional family being tested. This production was all surface humour, I found no depth in it at all and the dilemma that the son puts his parents through was so played for laughs that there was no poignancy or emotion to be found. Every so often pathos was approached with some straight acting and then the cast broke into song - and as only two of the four main singers could actually sing this broke the momentum time after time, especially as only two of the four main singers could actually sing well.

It would also have been nice if all of the cast knew their lines - this is a major tour with (allegedly) big names and yet three weeks in lines were still fluffed repeatedly.  Worse than this was the fact that I never believed in the relationship between George and Albin, they were supposed to have been a couple for 20+ years and yet to be it came across as no more than a working relationship. I know that after time the passion can diminish but here I thought it had vanished totally!

I did feel sorry for Partridge, playing Albin, however as there is one scene where he is 'doing' his cabaret and talking to the audience. The night we were in the house was less than a third full and as the Theatre Royal in Norwich is a big venue it must have been hard to keep the energy needed for this part of the show.

All in all this was an okay night out at the theatre, but I expected much more from a headline show and not all of this can be put down to the small audience.  It made me want to come home and watch the film again to remember that there is a good, funny, sad and enjoyable story to La Cage.

Theatre 2016: Review Thirty-Five

Breakfast at Tiffany's, Norwich Theatre Royal, Norwich. November 2016.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of my favourite films and when I found out that the play was coming to Norwich it has to be said I was happy.

Then the play opened in London to reviews that weren't great and I got a bit nervous - was this going to be one of those times where the film was better than anything else...

Sadly my fears were right, I don't quite see why the film has been turned into a play. It was very slow with lots of 'telling' not 'showing' and while I can't say I was actually bored during this play I certainly wasn't engaged with it for much of the time.

The cast were mostly likable and I am incredible impressed that they have managed to train a cat to act and I found the set to be very clever but the script was a little dull and all of it to be just "meh" which is very unusual for the things I've picked to see this year. I am pleased that I didn't go to London to see this - a half price ticket to a show I can get home from in 10 minutes made the evening seem a lot better!

The play was a hybrid of the film and Truman Capote's book and I liked some of the additions but overall I just think I'd rather watch the film - and I don't often say that!

Theatre 2016: Review Twenty-Six

Doctor Faustus, The Barbican, London. September 2016.

I'm easily swayed into going to the theatre and this time it was my friend the Upstart Wren who was keen on seeing this.  I have a love/hate relationship with the RSC but Doctor Faustus is a play I like a lot and so I was quite happy to accompany her.  It all started well, trains were on time, we found the Barbican with no problems and our seats were excellent...

The opening was promising too - the roles of Faustus and Mephistopheles are shared between two actors and at each performance the decision as to who plays which role is decided by striking matches, however as the characters were dressed identically at this point I can't remember whether the owner of the match that went out first played Faustus or Mephistopheles - already not a good sign for the play!

I got more hopeful as the start did show Faustus surrounded by books, but my reading of him is that he feels he has learnt all he can from the books he has but wants more which is why he makes his pact but in this version he starts by throwing books away in disgust and I had the feeling that he was bored by them not that he was a renowned scholar.

It just went downhill from here on. The text had been drastically cut but the time filled with lots of modern dance and whitewashing of the stage. I never felt that the good and bad angels were actually fighting for Faustus, they merely seemed bored and one of them could barely speak the line.
A moment of levity came with the appearance of the deadly sins although even this became smug and self referential as covetousness appeared to look like Antony Sher's Richard III - a role he played for the RSC...

image from Findingshakespeare.com

My biggest discomfort from the play came ultimately from the feel of the piece. I found it to be incredibly anti-Semitic in tone.  At times, to stress the evil events, a black and white film is played at the back of the stage - this reminded me utterly of the propaganda films created by Goebbels during the late 1930s and early 1940s, also the words Faustus speaks to conjure throughout the play were certainly not the Latin of the original and had, to my ear, the harshness and cadences of Hebrew. 

I'm not the only one who has been made uncomfortable with this - other have commented that the students/devils have the look of Jewish scholars.

I'm pleased I saw this version of the play for it reminds me how good the Globe's version from 2011 was. I think that cutting out all of the humour from the play (like Shakespeare Marlowe's plays are a good balance of comedy/tragedy) was a mistake, the play felt unbalanced. I've also read the play since seeing it and I don't think I like the additions either. 

Ultimately I never believed in either of the leads - possibly because Mephistopheles looked just like Richard O'Brien when he played RiffRaff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Theatre 2016: Review Fourteen

Cymbeline, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, London. March 2013.

This was my final trip to this season at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre and Rebecca and I were introducing the venue to the Upstart Wren, after such a great season I was nervous that my luck couldn't hold and I hate to say I was right, but...

To be honest many of the problems I (and the others) had with this play could be put down to the script.  Although classed as a 'Late Play' it is so mad and contains so many aspects of other great plays that I wonder if it was in fact a very early play before Mr Shakespeare learned that less is more... There are girls dressed as boys, mistaken tokens, drugs that mimic death and that is before we even get to lines that are certainly recycled.
I knew it was a crazy play - let's face it, any play that needs Jupiter to descend from the ceiling to sort out the mess gets you wondering what the author was smoking - and I hoped that the Globe venue would really play on this.

Sadly what we got was a really anodyne production, it all seemed to be stuck in one gear and never took off.

The truly creepy scene was played so flat that people were laughing - and we're not talking "I feel really uncomfortable so I giggled." The scene could have been played for laughs but it wasn't here and so I found it very odd indeed.
The truly bizarre unraveling of the plot at the end was greeted by gales of laughter too - it was funny but by this time we were all looking for *any* emotional release that it got far more laughs than it deserved (and often ahead of the text).

Unlike the rest of the season the theatre also felt very close and uncomfortable - I hope that the Upstart Wren will try the venue again as this season I have seen 3 outstanding plays, and one very good one in the Playhouse and this was a disappointment.  I'm pleased that I had the chance to see this play but I wish that The Tempest  had been my final show of the Dominic Dromgoole era.

Theatre 2015: Review Thirty-Two

Hamlet, The Barbican, London. September 2015.

I'm late getting this review up, uni has restarted and I had a short break away but even without these reasons I'd have found it hard to review this play.

Rebecca and I were hoping that with much better seats we'd love the play more. And indeed this time we were sat at the front of the circle and on the opposite side of the auditorium so in theory all should have been well...

While we could now see all of the balcony scenes, and they were worth seeing, we lost the wonderful depth and wonder of the stage and while not a lot of lines were given in this area the 'wow factor' was well and truly lost.

Once more we found that the actors weren't engaging/making eye contact with the auditorium and all three of us decided that it was a bit like watching the play on the television rather than live. Act One is also far too long!

I feel sorry for the third of our trio, she doesn't join us as often in our theatre trips and last year we dragged her along to the grim Richard III and this summer it was Hamlet... I think we all agreed that Cumberbatch was worth seeing but the rest of the cast were insipid still. Oh well perhaps I wasn't being overly grumpy in August, perhaps this really is a duff production!

Theatre 2015: Review 16

Shrek the Musical, Theatre Royal, Norwich. June 2015.

I was vaguely interested in this when it had a London run, just not enough to plan a trip to the capital to see it, so finding out that Norwich was on the tour schedule came as a nice surprise.

I am really not at all sure what to make of the show however.

Visually it was stunning, the scenery and set were inventive, fun and worked in harmony with the rest of the show,  The costumes were also good - it did look a lot like the animation had come to life.  The cast were okay too with a couple of real standouts.  Just sadly the parts just didn't all come together to make this a 'wow' event for me.

I think that on the whole I blame the score and the sound for my feelings.  The songs were all original to the show - this is not a 'jukebox' musical like Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You, and yet unlike other original shows (Phantom, Miss Saigon etc) the songs were not catchy and for a lot of the time I found them to be incomprehensible and was wishing for subtitles! Duets and ensemble numbers seemed badly balanced and again often inaudible.

Bits of this show had me in absolute stitches - the drop in gags about other musicals were very funny, and Lord Farquaad stole the show every time he appeared on the stage.  The dragon was brilliant too - again puppetry proving that you don't need expensive animatronics to create effects. The scene with the Pied Piper and the rats was very well done too.  I just expected a little bit more.

It was a fun evening, I did laugh a lot and thanks to the end number I did come out humming a tune which is what you want from a musical but it just wasn't quite the fabulous experience I was  expecting and I'm glad I didn't travel too far to see it.

Theatre 2015: Review Fourteen

High Society, The Old Vic, London. June 2015.

As a rule Rebecca and I don't see many musicals but this one proved too tempting - a venue we like, at least one actor that we admire and an impressive artistic director - it all added up to a must see.  Added to that very reasonable ticket prices and no planned engineering works/strikes on the trains meant we skipped off to London midweek quite happily.

I certainly wasn't sure what we were going to see - I'd neither seen the film version of High Society nor The Philadelphia Story but that didn't matter as the story telling on stage was very clear from the beginning.  We were in a wealthy American household, somewhere on the East Coast, to celebrate the second marriage of a wealthy woman.  That the groom to be wasn't suitable or liked was obvious.  Thrown into the mix was the ex-husband (much loved by the rest of the family) and a threatened scandal involving a journalist and photographer...

That the plot was so clear was a real plus point as often I found the sound balance to be out meaning that the dialogue was unclear, occasionally inaudible, especially during some of the musical numbers.
The staging also baffled me.  Currently the Old Vic is configured into the round and so the stage space itself felt very cramped, and in some seats the audience had no where to put their feet save on the acting space. This stage design did allow for multiple entrance and exit points which were well used and it was well used in an acting sense - no part of the auditorium felt like it was neglected/unplayed - but for me I thought the production needed the pomp and status that a proscenium arch theatre can give.  As for the number of props needed for each scene and carried on by the ensemble, well I think that they may have had more stage time than the main cast.

Oh dear, this is all sounding terribly negative and while it wasn't the best afternoon at the theatre I've had it was still entertaining and a feast for the eyes.  I think I'd compare it to a Chinese takeaway - at the time you are satisfied but very quickly you realise that you are hungry again!

The highlights for me were certainly the male leads - Dexter, Mike and Uncle Willie plus the little sister Dinah.  They had great roles to perform and fabulous voices to do them justice.  There were some funny lines and witty staging but overall no more than pleasant fluff.  It all felt a little overblown in the wrong way and it really pains me to have to say so,

Theatre 2015: Review Three

Taken at Midnight. Theatre Royal Haymarket, London. January 2015.

It has been a little while since I saw this, the review is late because I saw a preview of the show and also because I was unwell the week after seeing it.

There is also another reason - the old adage if you can't say something nice,don't say anything at all rings horribly true with my feelings on the play.

We had good seats, the actors spoke well and the scenery and use of stage was good. The original story - that of lawyer Hans Litton -  is incredible.  This is a man who put Hitler on trial before he came to power and was then, inevitably, imprisoned once Hitler was legitimately elected to power.

So what went wrong?  For me there was just too much narration and not enough acting, I think in fact that the cast spent more time carrying props on and off the stage than they did interacting with them, or each other. There were two stand out performances that of John Light as Dr Konrad the SS Officer and Martin Hutson as Hans.  The role of Hans' mother, played by Penelope Wilton, should have been a tour de force but sadly was one note and flat throughout.

In the final two scenes I finally became emotionally involved, and the final scene before the interval was shocking but on the whole this made a great radio play but not very inspiring theatre.

Theatre 2014: Reviews Thirty-Six and Thirty-Seven

Henry IV parts I & II (RSC), Theatre Royal, Norwich. October 2014.

This past week I have spent a little over 6 hours in the theatre watching the two parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV and even now a few days on I am really not sure what I thought of the two plays.

Overall I enjoyed the duo but not as much as I'd expected, and this isn't just because the theatre seats weren't that comfortable for that length of time - after all I am happy to spend this much time at the Globe on wooden benches in the rain...

Whilst saying that I enjoyed the plays overall I am hard pressed to think of any specific moments except the choreography of the battle in part I and the deathbed scene and aftermath in part II. Both of these captivated me wholly and were a wonder to watch, and the latter did move me. The speaking and singing in Welsh during part I were also impressive.

However it would be fair to say that had these plays been renamed Falstaff part I & II it would be a fairer account of how the plays were staged/directed. As I never warmed to Sir Antony Sher's version of the character this was a bit of a problem.  I felt no chemistry at all between him and the rest of the cast, especially Prince Hal, and thus when he was rejected at the very end it didn't feel a surprise or a betrayal - something I keenly felt when seeing the DVD of the Globe version and from reading the texts.

The direction of Hotspur in part I also caused me some problems as he was played as completely unlikeable, again not something I've come across before. For sure he should be hot-headed but there was no reason at all for Henry IV to prefer him over Hal in this version and rather than hoping that the underdog would win I wanted to cheer when he was killed.

Possibly the biggest problem for me was that from the circle I couldn't tell Prince Hal and his companion Poins apart and for much of the production (whether intentional direction or not) I felt that Poins was more imposing than Hal and thus I mistook him for the prince in many scenes.

It all sounds very negative, and after part I that is certainly how I felt, part II did improve the experience for me but it all felt very worthy and the joy that I've found in Shakespeare (even in the versions of Macbeth and Richard III at the Trafalgar studios) was missing here.
My complaints could be because the staging didn't work so well in a traditional, dark, proscenium arch theatre where the acoustics were not the best but I think that my unease and dislike of the production are deeper than this and again it is that I prefer the Globe's interpretation to that of the RSC.

I'm glad I saw this, and after the recent treat that was Two Gentlemen of Verona, I am a little disappointed in my reaction but it does confirm that I am right to travel to London regularly rather than struggling to Stratford.  I will keep trying the RSC versions at the cinema however!

Theatre 2014: Review Thirty-Four

Doctor Scroggy's War, Shakespeares' Globe, London. October 2014.

After meeting Rebecca, having a cup of tea, saying goodbye to companion number one and locating our hotel we returned to the Globe for the evening.

We started in the lecture theatre below the theatre for a "Perspectives" talk. This involved Howard Brenton (author of the play) talking about the play and then taking questions from the audience.  The talk tried very hard not to spoil any surprises in the play for those of us who hadn't yet seen it but at the same time gave us a good idea on how it came to be written and some of the research undertaken to formulate it.

I was most interested in the areas of the talk, and questions, that talked about how Brenton wrote the play for the space and the uniqueness of the Globe, and how the audience interaction can both be a help and a hindrance to the playwright and actor.  I was also really pleased to hear Brenton talk about how WW1 wasn't the first mechanised/trench war - he acknowledged the American Civil War! This is a pet peeve of mine - can you tell!

After the talk we had very high hopes for the play and were in our seats well before the start.

The plot follows three people Jack Twigg - a temporary gentleman with a commission in the London Irish Regiment, Penelope Wedgewood - a leading socialite, and Dr Harold Gillies - a pioneering plastic surgeon with a progressive and unorthodox take on medicine and the importance of morale on healing. There are many other incidental characters helping to drive the plot and in historical terms the play focuses on the Battle of Loos in 1915 and the incredible mistake made by high command.

The play purports to be, and the pre show talk lead me to believe, that the focus would be on the dramatisation of the real life Gillies and his unorthodox but effective treatment of soldiers who suffered facial injuries - he was in fact mentioned recently in the moving ITV series The People's War - however for me this didn't turn out to be the case.

For me the play felt like it was put on stage too early - I think that there are three excellent stories to be told, but that to develop them better each needs more space, or a play of their own.  Jack's story is fascinating and I wanted to know more of him in all ways, without spoilers it is also still very pertinent in asking what does being British actually mean.

Penelope undergoes the most radical of changes and has a fascinating arc to explore, especially in the light of last year's Bluestockings and as for poor Gillies...he was played by the ever wonderful James Garnon but was woefully under used and I felt that there was a lot more mileage in his character. It almost feel disrespectful to use a real person in such a desultory way.

My final grievance with the play was the jig at the end, I can't explain why but for me to see people dancing to Goodbye Dolly Gray and Tipperary seemed wrong.

On the plus side the play held my attention throughout the (scant) two hours, I laughed lots and learned lots of new things about a subject I do know well. It was acted brilliantly and the use of sound was incredible.  I hope that perhaps some more work is done on this play and that it does come back again as it is an interesting story, I'm just not 100% sure that at present the play tells it.

Greek Delight?

The Sunrise by Victoria Hislop

proof supplied by Headline and the Reading Agency

When an email dropped into my work inbox offering me the chance to apply for an advance copy of Victoria Hislop's new novel I leapt at it and was lucky enough to get one of the copies on offer.

I read The Island when it first came out and loved it - possibly because I knew the setting, mainly because it was a great book - and have read Hislop's new books avidly since.

The Sunrise is set in Cyprus in 1974, before, during and after the failed coup and the subsequent Turkish invasion and partition of the island.  Cleverly following two families and the way they are linked both sides of the argument are clearly put whilst at the same time making the point that there are very few differences between them. I knew that Cyprus was still a divided nation but not really how or why it happened and the idea of an abandoned city right in the middle of the divide was intriguing.

I'm not sure why but for me this book just didn't have the resonance of Hislop's others.  There didn't seem to be quite the depth of history that I've found in her other novels and also I never felt that I got to know any of the characters despite the length of the book. It all seemed very rushed and at the same time terribly plodding.

I do wonder if this is my fault as I started this book shortly after reading some quite 'heavy' literary fiction and perhaps I hadn't managed to switch my brain around for lighter reading.  Perhaps this really is holiday book and if I re-read it next year on a beach (possibly in Greece) I'll enjoy it more?

A recent photo of Famagusta - a modern ghost town

This is a review of an advance copy, the book is published in September 2014.

Theatre 2014: Review Twenty-Six

Richard III, Trafalgar Studios, London. 2014.

In 2012 I saw the amazing Globe Theatre/Mark Rylance Richard III twice and in 2013 I saw Macbeth at the Trafalgar Studios by the same director.

Both of these things had made me wary about seeing this version of Richard III but the thought of seeing Martin Freeman in a serious role drew three of us to the theatre on a very hot August day.

When the cast appeared on stage wearing gas masks Rebecca and I groaned simultaneously - was this to be a total repeat of Macbeth where the characters were incomprehensible?  Happily they pulled this odd prop off straight away and one fear at least was allayed.

The play wasn't totally bad. Freeman was very good and it was easy to forget that it was 'him from Sherlock/ the Hobbit/ the Office' on stage.  He was also very good at the comic side of Richard's character but I never really got the malevolent side of him at all, even in the scene where he is brutally murdering his wife.  He wasn't particularly playing the role for laughs I don't think but the audience were certainly reacting as if it was total comedy throughout and I think this, and the staging lead me to feel this.

The staging was cluttered, the actors couldn't move around at all and I'm not really sure what the 1970s setting added to the play, in fact when Richard calls "my horse..." it seemed really stupid and nothing at all to do with the play.

I never connected with the action at all, I really might as well have been watching a film - something that I've not experienced at the theatre for a long time. It isn't as if the theatre itself is huge causing this disconnect, just my response to a flat production which seemed to be just like Macbeth complete with the opening of the back of the theatre to the main street to allow the soldiers to flood in and create an effect.

Rebecca had a lot of problem with the female characters adding nothing to the production, and reminded me of the power they had in the all male version. I can see what she means,I thought that in this version the director realised that the play was quite 'female-lite' and so had them on stage more but despite this they become indistinguishable from each other and to be honest a lot of the time were inaudible.

I wanted to like this production, I'd hoped that Macbeth was an aberration from a good director but I feel that his attempts to make Shakespeare 'hip' are hindering the plays which don't need fancy staging just good clear story telling.

This production has come in for some criticism from various sides saying that the audience are only going to see Martin Freeman and that they are spoiling theatre by not knowing how to behave.  I didn't find this at all, it was nice to see a younger audience at a play and there was no inappropriate applause or screaming.  I did find the humour overplayed in respect to the horror but that isn't necessarily the audience's fault.

I'm glad we saw Freeman on stage -it was nice to see that he can be more than a  bumbling side-kick but I'm afraid I won't be rushing back to any more Trafalgar Transformed productions and I'll be very wary of plays directed by Jamie Lloyd.

It was nice that our third theatre-going friend could make this play with us again, we've missed her! I just hope that she wasn't put off by our choice of play.  A third perspective after the production was really nice.